Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” is a short poem that depicts “the Author[’s]” dream as a result of reading a book called Purchas’s Pilgrimage and falling into an anodyne (opium) induced sleep. Coleridge was in fact high on opium when he composed this story from unconscious composition via a dream. He then later put his vision to words. Coleridge did not intend himself to be directly portrayed by the readers as “the Author” character depicted in the poem. The public’s reaction to the poem then and today, why Coleridge has set up “the Author,” as well as why Coleridge chose the two part introduction/dream format play a large role in how the poem should be analyzed in order to investigate its true purpose and meaning. History proves that the more time progresses the more open minded society becomes to an idea. A prime example of how society’s views change with time is what was once thought as magic is now proven science. Therefore, the thought of the unconscious composition of “Kubla Khan” is more likely to be accepted by today’s readers than it was by the Romantic Era’s rational-thinking critics. Stefan Ball, author of “Coleridge’s Ancestral Voices,” stated in his critical essay that Coleridge conducted his writing towards the end of the Age of Reason. “Kubla Khan” was ill-accepted at the time of publication because society believed that “[the] conscious mind was the key to progress and enlightenment; unbridled self-expression had yet to become fashionable; tradition and continuity were valued more than novelty; and artifice in art was still a sign of quality.” Ball also points out in his essay that, “[with] few exceptions the reading public adhered to critical standards based on experience and reason, and there was little room in either for unadorned dreaming” (Ball). When “Kubla Khan” was published in 1816, critics, magazine reviews, and fellow authors all
As a reader, one can glean that when conducting an argument, written or otherwise, it would be better received if one first identifies the target audience. Upon doing so the argument can be made by using more factual data to back up thoughts and opinion. For an arguer it is best to not use sarcasm and slights against those who disagree, it closes them off to new ideas. By following these argumentative rules, Gennai’s argument for the influx of creativity would have been better utilized within the world of the
In his preface to "Kubla Khan," Samuel Taylor Coleridge makes the claim that his poem is a virtual recording of something given to him in a drug-induced reverie, "if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things . . . without any sensation or consciousness of effort." As spontaneous and as much a product of the unconscious or dreaming world as the poem might seem on first reading, however, it is also a finely structured, well wrought device that suggests the careful manipulation by the conscious mind.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Kahn” is an example of imaginative poetry due to an opium addiction. This poem creates its own kingdom and paradise while Colridge expresses his ideas of Heaven and Hell through his own drug induced thoughts and opinions.
Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market” and Samuel Taylor Coleridge's "The Rime of The Ancient Mariner are the two works that will be discussed in this essay. This essay will explore the different cultural background of both texts along with the authors. Both texts were written in different time periods, the Victorian Period (1837-1901), and the Romantic period (1800-1850). Both periods had their different features and requirements, which will be discuss and tied into the works of both authors throughout the rest of this essay. Throughout the Romantic and Victorian period, symbolism and the supernatural were two features that were common; which both appeared in Rossetti’s and Coleridge’s work. Supernatural can be a distinction to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature. The supernatural and symbolism that appeared in works of Rossetti’s and Coleridge’s tend to show various similarities in the culture, and period surrounding each work. A comparison between these two authors will give a crucial explanation.
Poetry is a creative art form that allows a critical thinking connection between the creator and the audience of each poem. The reader must think critically and in depth about the subject matter and meaning of what each poet is presenting with their body of work. On the other hand, the poet must be able to present their body of work with a unique writing style that encodes a deeper message than what appears on the surface. Most would say that poetry is read for its witty internal messages, but the reader must be able to accurately decipher the message the poet is presenting to fully understand the poet’s allusions. I believe that all poetry is inspired by memorable life events that have been experienced by an individual whether good or bad. If this is true, then much of the subject matter and meaning of poetry can be deciphered by identifying the key elements in each poem such as tones, moods, similes, metaphors, writing styles, and most importantly knowing the facts of the creator’s personal life experiences. In this essay, I will use the identifying techniques listed above to decipher the poem, “Out, Out-” by Robert Frost, to determine if Mr. Frost’s personal experiences with
In Evolution and Literary Theory, Joseph Carroll provides a paradigm for the integration of literary criticism with evolutionary psychology. First, he argues that literary critics should learn to understand and respect the evidence for the basic contention of evolutionary psychology, namely, that the human mind is not a blank slate which receives all of its content from an external culture, but that human cognition and the culture that is based on it are highly constrained by innate psychological mechanisms, which evolved in the environment in which humans spent most of their evolutionary history, the hunting-gathering bands of Pleistocene Africa. Humans evolved a rich array of specialized mental mechanisms for dealing with this environment, including mechanisms for determining mate value (see Buss), for protecting kin (see Daly and Wilson, 17-121), for social exchange (see Cosmides and Tooby 1992) and many others. These psychological mechanisms collectively form the human nature which underlies the production and consumption of literary texts. However, the scope of an evolutionarily informed literary analysis is not limited to simply finding these human universals in literary texts. Rather, many of these psychological mechanisms are “open programs” which permit of a wide range of cultural and individual variation (Carroll 152). Carroll identifies the three levels at which a literary criticism informed by evolutionary psychology should work: human nature, cultural order, and individual identity (150). While human nature constrains all cultural productions, “cultural forms are themselves the product of a complex interaction among various innate dispositions and between innate dispositions and variable environmental conditions” (152). Evolutionary psychology enables us to understand not only literary universals, but also the complex and often conflicting relationship between human nature, culture, and the individual.
The Myth of Fragmentation - The Composition and Publication History of Samuel T. Coleridge's Kubla Khan
Classicist and Romanticists also differed on their approches towards reason and imagination. Classicism attached much more importance to reason than imagination because imagination could not be explained by their laws. To them, “;the imagination, though essential to literature, had to be restrained by reason and common sense.”; (text, 119) The Romanticists, however, emphasized that reason was not the only path to truth. “;Instead, Romantic writers emphasized intuition, that inner perception of truth which is independent of reason.”; (text, 122) To the Romantic writers, imagination was ultimately superior to reason.
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. “Kubla Khan.” The Norton Anthology: English Literature. Ninth Edition. Stephen Greenblatt, eds. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012. 459-462. Print.
...ubla Khan, the imagination is more of a physical, creative force, with more raw power than finesse. With it, works such as a pleasure-dome full of physical paradoxes can be inspired, created, and described, far better than with the words of a critic alone “A sunny pleasure-dome with caves of ice!”. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner has it that the imagination is more of an intangible force, subtle yet with as much power as the imagination in Kubla Khan. It connects the huge array of creatures on the Earth together, and without the imagination, they would, die in the end, one by one.
These imaginative minds are often separated into two different generations, or styles of writings, based on the style of authors and the experiences that they wrote about. The first generation of poets wrote about the longing for freedom and attempted to see the light at the end of the tunnel and remained hopeful. The optimistic poets, such as Wil...
In his epic poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge critiques the Gothic convention of the explained supernatural (in particular explanation in the form of divine intervention) through his portrayal of the tension between Christian themes and the sublimity of the archaic both within the poem itself as well as in the external preface and marginal glosses accompanying the poem. I intend to argue that despite the seemingly inherent Christian morality present on the surface of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Coleridge subtly draws attention to a pre-Christian subtext, which holds the insignificance of humanity and the unknowability of the universe in high regard. Through his characterization of the Ancient Mariner and his
During the time-period when they authored this essay, the commonly held notion amongst people was that “In order to judge the poet’s performance, we must know what he intended.”, and this notion led to what is termed the ‘Intentional fallacy’. However, Wimsatt and Beardsley argue that the intention, i.e., the design or plan in the author’s mind, of the author is neither available nor desirable for judging the success of a work of literary art. It is not available because the author will most certainly not be beside the reader when he/she reads the text, and not desirable because intention as mentioned already is nothing but the author’s attitude towards his work, the way he felt while writing the text and what made him write that particular piece of writing and these factors might distract the reader from deciphering the meaning from the text. This method of reading a text without any biographical or historical background of either the poem or the poet practiced by the New Critics was known as ‘Closed Reading’. This stemmed from their belief in the autonomy of the text.
We are locked out of Conrad’s (the narrator in this case) world, allowed to feel only what he let’s us, see the savages as he does, through his eyes, feel with his body. We are not able to see how the world views him. Is he seen as superior, a drone, a sailor? His dreamlike consciousness navigates us, the readers, down the river as if we are a part of the flow of things, ripples in the water, patches of the darkness.
“Xanadu” is a wonderful “Paradise” of fantasy, but Coleridge draws the readers back to reality with the word “I.” He immediately transitions from describing visionary objects to explaining his own poetic challenge. The “pleasure-dome” mirrors the poem and Kubla Khan mirrors Coleridge. The poem ultimately becomes a “vision in a dream,” where the reader recognizes the images that Coleridge recreates through imagination.